Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday April 12, 2014 @12:24PM
from the montezuma-takes-over-the-universe dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Today at PAX East, Firaxis announced Civilization: Beyond Earth. It's a new Civ game inspired by their sci-fi strategy classic Alpha Centauri. Beyond Earth is currently planned to launch this year on the PC. According to Game Informer: 'Beyond Earth presents an opportunity for Firaxis to throw off the shackles of human history and give players the chance to sculpt their own destinies. Civilization games typically have a set endpoint at humanities modern age, but Beyond Earth has given Firaxis the opportunity and the challenge of creating a greater sense of freedom. ... The five different victory conditions that represent that next major event in human history are tied to the new technology web. At the start of the game, players will choose leaders and factions (no longer bundled with one another) and choose colonists and equipment to settle the land. Once descending from orbit, the technology web allows players to move in a number of directions.'"

I know they say its not Alpha Centauri 2, but thats all it has to be. The original had so much depth and fun, just keep that intact, and don't mess it up, and it will be a brilliant game. Alpha Centauri remains one of the best games in the Civilization world

Alpha Centauri gave you a number of ways to win, non-militarily, and there was quite a lot to do without focusing on the military.
If you played the Peacekeeper faction, and / or built the wonder to double your votes, and colonized the seas like a madman you could win diplomatically. I'd say a minority of my games were won militarily. Economically the least often, because you had to wait forever to win with money.
All multiplayer games are always won only militarily. Humans won't give you the time to win a

I really wanted to like Gal Civ 2, but it was lacking in fun factor and soul. The combat was terrible, the economy boring. On paper it looked like a great game, but was unfortunately, a nearly unplayable failure. Endless Space is way better.
Alpha Centauri had maybe the best quotes of any Civ (or any game ever)

Honestly, I have no idea how you can not enjoy Civ V. I've owned all the Civ games except for II. Enjoyed all of them, but V is by far the most tactical, and interesting to play. The hex based system, and the fact that you can only have one unit per tile makes attacking cities much much much trickier than it ever used to be.

The original Civ V release was terrible. Sure, it had some nice tactical flavor to it (which the computer players are completely incompetent at BTW), but it loses a lot of the fun of Civ IV.

For example, there's a lot more restrictions in play - especially the penalties on placing more cities. They dropped the health mechanic of Civ IV for growing cities and population, but they replaced it with a bogus penalty to culture and research from additional cities. It just doesn't feel right. The tech tree is bogus and it's clear that they structured the tree as they did for game balance rather than any sense of realism. Even worse is the culture trees. They don't feel even remotely realistic.

Subsequent releases have helped balance that stuff out somewhat (Civ 5 does have a better religion system an the ideology conflict in the late game is nice) and add more to the mid and late games, but it still needs a lot of work. For example, in the latest variant of Civ 5 there are three different ways to trade.

The city state mechanic needs work too. A more realistic mechanic would be that the barbarians eventually settle down and form the city states (as they adopt the civilization ideas of the core civilizations). But that would mean a lot more city states than are presently in the game and a whole new mechanism for dealing with trade and city state alliances is required.

Honestly, I like the fact that they put a penalty on expanding too much too quickly. Early Civs had the issue that the roll your war machine over everyone approach by far dominated other paths to victory. Civ V balanced that out nicely.

You're right though, the way that culture worked (as opposed to just happiness) was completely broken, and completely impossible to win in a multiplayer match, and yes, the expansions sorted that out.

Those are good critiques of Civ5. There are a more, of course, but *most* of them boil down to the original release of the game being, basically, too big a change for them to get it right.

Let me say that again: Civ 5 was *badly* flawed at release, because it was too big a change.

For example, in a game where each unit (and tile, since they go together) is so much more precious than they were before, the 10HP system (where even a curbstomp battle costs 10% of your health, and the enemy rolling just a *little*

Many world wonders (and most national wonders) contain a Great Work slot, or even a slot pre-filled with a Great Work. If you are trying to win a tourism victory, it's difficult if you only rely on non-Wonder buildings to provide Great Work slots. Unless you have a large empire (6+ cities) you will run out of building-provided slots sooner than you'd like - then you're left with sl

For example, there's a lot more restrictions in play - especially the penalties on placing more cities. They dropped the health mechanic of Civ IV for growing cities and population, but they replaced it with a bogus penalty to culture and research from additional cities. It just doesn't feel right. The tech tree is bogus and it's clear that they structured the tree as they did for game balance rather than any sense of realism. Even worse is the culture trees. They don't feel even remotely realistic.

I agree with all of this, but it's not Civ5's real problem.
The real problem is the absolutely retarded AI. The AI doesn't expand (seriously, 1500 AD and China still has 1 city) cant fight a war, wont bother advancing tech very far and the diplomacy system is a complete joke (I've surrounded your last city with battleships and rocket artillery and they wont give me a few gold to go away).

The different leaders have different AI personalities - some just don't give up 'til the last man dies. Others may be willing to crack a deal. Montezuma is more likely to declare war on you than Gandhi, for example. I've played an unbelievable amount of Civ 5 over the past few years, and I'd say it's an 80/20 split in favor of the enemy surrendering if their army is wiped out and you have them surrounded.

I've seen *very* few games where other civs failed to expand. By 1500 AD even the slowest civs wil

I've always hated the end game of Civ's. It's always felt... dissatisfying. Early/Mid game was always fun but if it lasted to the end game, I usually ended up quitting and starting over.

This newly announced game has so many paths it could take and the possibilities are truly endless, if the dev's decide to make it so that is. I had faith, but after Civ V, the Sid Meier's brand has faltered in my eyes.

(i've been playing his games since Sid Meier's Civilization (holy shit that was a long time ago), my favorit

Because Civ is a single player game. It isn't meant for multiplayer, and multiplayer has always been a terrible experience. I'd prefer if they dropped it entirely and spent more time on polishing the AI or released it earlier. Because they shove in a half baked multiplayer we get a worse game.

Because Civ is a single player game. It isn't meant for multiplayer, and multiplayer has always been a terrible experience. I'd prefer if they dropped it entirely and spent more time on polishing the AI or released it earlier. Because they shove in a half baked multiplayer we get a worse game.

I've had lots of fun playing Civilization 4 over LANs, so please allow me to disagree, for the most part, with your statement.
That said, the AI in Civ 5 is rather flawed.

The worst part is I know the gameplay is probably going to be so similar to old versions of the Civ franchise that I might as well just dust them off, but because it's shiny and new I'll pay any price and waste many hours of my life on it. Only game that ever beat Civ in terms of replayability for me was nethack.

If you want to buy a computer game, you'd better know what the others say..Civilization is not bad (I played Civ3 and Civ5), I like the style of this game, but just like the others say, can't be multiplayer, about that, it's a pity..

Extremely mixed bag. But most of the ones that won't run in WINE will run in a windows virtual machine in VMware Player. You do have a VLK XP ISO, don't you? Even most of the D3D games will work using that combination. Indeed, games that won't work in XP Mode on Windows 7.

Last time I touched the VMware Player, full screen mode wasn't supported. Ditto VirtualBox.

I am not aware of a time when vmware player didn't have full screen support. I have been using it for years. Virtualbox, on the other hand, is an unremitting piece of shit. It also has full screen mode, but the d3d passthrough never works. It always crashes something, usually the VM.

As a fan of the franchise all the way back the original, I gotta say, I did not buy 5, and I doubt I will buy this either. The days when I thought it was fun to spend as much time in a debugger fixing deliberate breakage as I actually spent playing it are in the past.

I have 5 and dont play it much. I went back to IV, which I consider to be the still the high point (along with Alpha Centauri) of the franchise. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who was disillusioned with V, my friends like it a lot.

After being bitten by Firaxis on my CivV pre-order, insisting Valve shutdown of my Steam account to ensure I could prove I never played it and then threatening litigation with Firaxis for false claims on a product I wanted a refund for (which I got from them); I have serious doubts about anything they put out.

All they need to do is remake Alpha Centauri like MS is doing Age of Mythology and I think a majority of people will be happy. Anything to the contrary and I'll pirate it just

Is the NVideo GTX TITAN Black or Radeon R9 295X2 going to be enough GPU for the game? Will I have to 3-way SLI or CrossFire them? It seems all the last Civ games have really pushed the graphics envelope which never made much sense to me since I find them to be almost spreadsheet games. I love Civ (particularly 2 & 4), but the video requirements seem excessive. I remember buying a GTX 8800 for Civ 4, and GTX 580 for Civ 5.

Is the NVideo GTX TITAN Black or Radeon R9 295X2 going to be enough GPU for the game? Will I have to 3-way SLI or CrossFire them? It seems all the last Civ games have really pushed the graphics envelope which never made much sense to me since I find them to be almost spreadsheet games. I love Civ (particularly 2 & 4), but the video requirements seem excessive. I remember buying a GTX 8800 for Civ 4, and GTX 580 for Civ 5.

I thought you were joking, but I think you are serious.

Civ doesn't push the graphics boundaries at all. You seriously thought you needed a GTX 580 for Civ 5? Runs great on my Nividia 285 from like 5 years ago. Currently I have a 460 in my main gaming machine and it has no problem pumping out high graphics at 1080p on modern games. I'm probably going to need to upgrade in a year or so when the next gen titles start coming out, maybe. But in the last 5 or so years, games have not taken advantage of

I was half joking. I bought the GT 8800 because before Civ4, I was running onboard graphics which wouldn't run the first month (maybe week, that was a while ago), and was severly hobbled until I acquised to buying a better card. I continued to use the 8800 until Civ 5 when it was very clear, it would not even cut the most basic settings. I only upgraded when I was absolutely forced to.

The Civ III/IV/V were indicatory of the direction they want to move the game: simplify, make it connected.

I'd say it is an achievement to have a Civ game play out in matter of hours. Marvel of game design. But that is also what made it shallow. When you start the game, you already know approximately how it is going to end. There are few surprises there.

AC to me was THE immersive game. You could play it short way - but that was boring. Or you could play it long way - an

Used to play Civ until breakfast or out-of-memory errors called for a break at LAN parties (Starcraft/BW, too, until they took that away and lost my sales). Better with multiple PCs that hot-seat 'cause you could think ahead more easily.

Still playing AC from the Loki release for Linux. It will be interesting to see how well a simultaneous release works.

People say that Slashdot has fallen a long way...but that's just sad. A thread about a AAA game which is being released on Linux- with no mention in TFS, nor the chosen TFA, and only a tiny comment batch discussing it.

Even Reddit managed better coverage of the fact this is a Linux game than Slashdot. If I was just relying on Slashdot for my news, I wouldn't even have known this WAS a Linux game.

The AI in Civ 5 is terrible. Civs have trouble organizing their armies (ranged units up front?), and trying to get a friendly civ to join you in going to war with a common foe is next to impossible unless you go to war when your ally brings it up. If you're already at war, there's no way to get a friendly civ to join you (except for the diplomacy screen, but I've never heard of anyone successfully asking a civ to declare war).

The worst part is how long it takes the game to process the AI's turn. During t

Your requests are, unfortunately, somewhat contradictory. You ask for a smarter AI (that doesn't put ranged units in front, for example) and then ask for one that processes faster. You complain about the late-game AI time (where the decision trees are *huge*), then say you want the AI to give a harder game without handicaps.

Don't get me wrong, I want to see optimizations too. But, I think they did a pretty decent job of balance, especially in the expansions (the original game was kind of bad in many ways, A

Banished isn't even in the same genre. You're telling people looking forward to getting a TBS 4X game to go and buy a non-TBS city sim. Even ignoring that, you state it's "better" than a game that has yet to be released (even in alpha/beta form) or reviewed. I suppose it could be considered better in that you can actually play it now, but that's obviously not what you meant.

When we played Civilization 1 we just assumed the next version would involve the Moon at least, as to win the game; was to conquer the world, or be the first to launch a space ship, when it takes off that's game.

And play it we did, but how much of a step can it be to continue on the moon.

Play the heck out of the Civilization, Microsoft did jump in with Ages of Empires 1 and 11 (only ones I played) which I felt a much better game, but they did have one to copy from.

I've been playing this series since the first came out when I was 9. Steam tells me the last few games have claimed man years of my time. No other series has ever captured my attention quite the same way with the feeling of epic strategy.

but... The way I half-assedly justify this vice to myself is that Alzheimers runs in my family on both sides and cracking out on Civ hopefully gives me a decent brain workout, e.g. researchers and those asshats at lumosity saying people doing crosswords, puzzles, etc... stave off the disease longer.

The game is being produced by the same group that put out the failed Civilization V ala Lena Brenk, Dennis Shirk and Lisa Miller. They can pay off all the game reviewers they want, but the simple fact remains that Civilization V sucked when it came out. It might as well have been an expanded version of Civilization Revolution!

For me an countless others out there @ CivFanatics, I am heartbroken that this series has lost its way and any games they have put out since Civilization IV lack any merit as they play like garbage.

I truly hope Sidney Meier actually puts his foot down and ensures this game is done right without the constant pressures from the asshats @ 2K Games & Take-Two shits, but I highly doubt it considering the current industry trend of releasing unfinished games and then gouging their supporters by forcing them to buy DLC and fixes.

They have a console-friendly Civ already though, it's called Civ Revolutions. I actually think it's quite good for a quick game, though it lacks any kind of depth at all. But who wants to play a complex simulator with a gamepad? Hopefully the plan is to develop both lines further. It would be cool if Civ Rev Sequel would have more complexity under the hood, but I'd never want to actually be exposed to it. That's what a PC is for. On the other hand, Microsoft wants the Xbox One to be more PC-like, so perhaps

Now aliens can swoop down and destroy the two cities I finally got updated with a wooden wall. I can't wait! Anyone know what tech in the tech tree comes after pottery? I don't expect I'll get that far in the new version either.

Oh give it up already -- DRM is still an issue. Some of us still believe in the concept of ownership. Some of us still do play over the LAN all the time. High speed internet access IS a rare, hard to come by commodity for many. Some of us don't believe in having our accounts able to be banned and having our "access" to all of our supposedly-purchased games vanishing. Etc.